have left behind a changed comics industry, one that is now open to a more
sophisticated breed of fantasy, and is another step further in its quest
to legitimize comics as an art form.

Sandman was the most successful recent entry in this struggle,
a subtle and intelligent contribution to an art form normally associated
with Spandex costumes and testosterone-laden fistfights. Although Sandman's
publisher, D.C. Comics, is better known for mainstay characters like Batman
and Superman, Sandman has been one of D.C.'s top sellers for years
now.

Sandman's success was not always so assured. In 1988, Gaiman
was asked if he wanted to write a regular series for D.C. Never a big fan
of the superhero genre, he suggested Sandman instead, and D.C.,
which has historically been more willing to explore fantasy than other
mainstream competitors, gave Gaiman the comic.

Sandman's creator, however, started with the impression that
the book would be a minor critical success, sell poorly, and then be canceled
after the first year. Karen Berger, who has edited the entire Sandman
run, agreed: "None of us knew at the time that the book would be what
it would be."

Who, after all, could have reasonably expected that a comic book as
thoughtful and well-read as Sandman would become the success it
became? What oracle would have told Gaiman that his comic, which refers
to Paradise Lost as effortlessly as to Little Nemo in Slumberland,
would earn him near-household-name status and a three-book, $1 million
advance deal with Avon Books?

Sandman is a contemplative, heady book. It stars Morpheus, the
lord of all whimsy and imagination. In the stories, which range from the
fantastic to the horrific, Morpheus is sometimes at the forefront of the
action, and sometimes his powers and knowledge provide only a backdrop
for more intimate, mortal occurrences.

Sandman's succeeded, in part, because it appealed to the nontraditional
comic book audience; the focus on myth and history went against the mainstream
grain. Lance Smith, who works at the Dreamhaven comic shop in Dinkytown,
says that there have been a lot of readers who buy only Sandman
and no other comics.

In addition, Sandman attracted an unprecedented number of female
readers. On one hand, says Smith, the mere omission of the adolescent male
concerns in superhero books was enough to merit a look: " ... it's
not one continual fight scene, it's not a slugfest with Spandex."
On the other hand, Gaiman has a knack for well-rounded female characters:
"The women in Sandman may not always be sympathetic, but they're
strong and realistic. They have problems, but they're real problems, not
the kind of problems you see in X-Men."

Of course, the best way to appeal to readers of both genders is to simply
write well, which Gaiman does. In doing so, says Berger, he has highlighted
the importance of plot in what is often considered solely a visual medium:
"With Sandman, with most of the stuff he's done, he's really
helped raise the value of a writer in comics."

In mainstream comics, significant control over stories is rarely given
to the writer. Instead, the writer can be tightly constrained by the company,
which views its characters as valuable properties to be protected at all
costs. (Anyone who thought Superman was dead forever was fooling themselves.)
Gaiman's prestige as a writer gave him the leverage to buck this trend.
Not only has he been the sole author of Sandman (unusual for the
creators of comic book characters), but when he decided that the comic
would end at issue 75, D.C. had to concede, even though that meant the
end of a reliable and successful comic.

The idea of making a comic series finite is not entirely unheard of.
Most notably, Gaiman's friend, Dave Sim, has planned for years to end his
self-published comic Cerebus at issue 300, sometime in the next
millennium. The reason given by both is sensible enough: real stories don't
continue forever, outliving their originators as derivative, hackneyed
versions. Real stories work their way to an ending, and then they end.

That Gaiman would choose to end a comic of such fame was a public move
away from the product-driven mentality of mainstream comics. Instead, he
asserted what would have been obvious in almost any other medium: the author
makes or breaks a story, and without an individual vision, all the rest
-- setting, concept, character -- is just window dressing.

Beyond highlighting the importance of the individual author, the success
of Sandman paved the way for more sophisticated fantasy and horror
comics. Its success convinced D.C. to launch Vertigo, a new line of comics
whose titles have ranged from the gleefully vulgar Preacher to the
positively psychedelic Doom Patrol. Berger, who became the Vertigo
group editor, characterizes Vertigo books as "contemporary fiction
for adults in comic form."

Success also brought imitation from other companies, says Smith, citing
attempts by Marvel Comics, which is better known for their X-Men books,
to copy the Vertigo format. Their attempts included Razorline, based on
concepts by Clive Barker, and Marvel Edge, which Smith dismisses as "Vertigo
lite." "People look at Sandman and its success, get a
superficial view, mystical powers, etc., etc. They don't understand that
the writing behind Sandman is really good, and that's the important
thing, not the setting that the writing takes place in."

With Sandman finished, Smith predicts that he'll lose some customers,
but not too many. Bob Brynildson, who owns Source Comics and Games, isn't
too worried, either. "I don't think I'll sell less of a Vertigo comic
because Sandman is gone. If it happens, D.C. will redo Sandman
or do something similar to it."

If D.C. does try to somehow redo or copy Sandman, however, they
may have a difficult task ahead of them. "I can't think of a really
successful Sandman clone," says Smith. "I can think of
... a lot of good stuff that's come because Sandman and Vertigo
opened up some opportunities, but none obviously inspired by Sandman."

F		irst and foremost, Sandman is inimitable because inspiration is a difficult thing to copy. Gaiman's talent for characterization and plot -- whether put to use on family drama, fantasy

or horror -- is
what have drawn so many readers to Sandman.

In the first issues, Sandman runs at the same pace as many mainstream
comics: fast. But there are some individual issues that shine.

In the intimately terrifying "24 Hours," a madman uses one
of Dream's talismans to control and torment a diner's patrons. Gaiman creates
a handful of believable, sympathetic characters, and then tortures them
before our eyes.

The enchanting "Ramadan" tells the story of ancient Baghdad
and its king. The king realizes that, as with all great cities, the glory
of Baghdad is a fleeting one. So he sells the city to Morpheus, accepting
a fallen, dispirited Baghdad in its place, so that the true Baghdad may
continue to live in the dreams of others. The story behind "Ramadan"
is good, but what makes the issue remarkable is the florid, celebratory
art of P. Craig Russell, which does as much to convey the glory of the
once-great Baghdad as any of Gaiman's descriptions.

In comics, the interaction between artist and writer can take many forms.
Sometimes artist-writer teams establish themselves on one book, and sometimes
the artist and the writer are the same person. In the case of <I>Sandman</I>,
Gaiman has always been the driving force, with his writing being illustrated
by a constantly rotating staple of illustrators.

When it comes to good artists, Sandman has never been lacking.
Although Kelley Jones couldn't draw a relaxed facial expression if his
life depended on it, his stark, melodramatic linework is a nice complement
to Gaiman's otherworldly writing in Season of Mists. Shawn McManus
is a good match in A Game of You; his work is rounded, almost caricature-esque,
but subtle enough to convey a fine range of emotion and mood.

Unfortunately, Sandman goes through artists at a dizzying pace.
Few stories go by without a handful of artists tromping in and out of the
visual space Gaiman is working with; Season of Mists, for example,
credits seven artists for work on eight issues.

According to Berger, she and Gaiman had planned originally to have all
of the art done by only a few artists. However, theHowever, they soon encountered problems
with artists being able to keep to a monthly schedule, which led them to
the solution of spreading the work out among more than just two artists.

It's unfortunate that Berger and Gaiman couldn't have found another
way around the problem, whether by slave driving their artists or simply
slowing down their production schedule. When characters change appearance
abruptly between issues, or even in mid-issue, the effect is usually more
distracting than interesting.

The Kindly Ones, the second-to-last story which details the death
of Morpheus, offers a telling contrast. Marc Hempel drew almost every issue
of the work, and his gracefully simple art tilts between illustrative and
iconic, lending the epic tragedy a sense of timelessness.

In The Kindly Ones, Gaiman's writing, which had previously shown
the occasional, remarkable glimmer, begins to truly shine. Through a series
of machinations involving the Norse god Loki, the faerie Robin Goodfellow
and the witch Thessaly, the three Furies are set on Morpheus's trail. Weaving
together dozens of elements and characters from previous issues, Gaiman
and Hempel build a feeling of insistent dread and finality appropriate
to the death of Morpheus.

T		he Kindly Ones isn't the only time that characters return; despite Sandman's huge scale, a sense of connectedness runs throughout the whole book.

As one of the Endless, Morpheus can appear as easily in Roman antiquity
as in modern-day Los Angeles. Given the historical and geographical scope
of the stories, it's amazing that any character shows up more than once.

But Gaiman's world is rich with coincidence. For example, Judy, a minor
character who dies in the same issue where she makes her first appearance,
haunts the rest of the book at the most unexpected times, when we learn
that she was best friends with Rose Walker (The Doll's House) and
a former lover of Foxglove (A Game of You). The Sandman world
may be infinite, but it seems to be populated by a finite community.

Although Gaiman's talent shouldn't be downplayed, it should be noted
that his breed of story owes some of its success to the mood of the times,
an environment where stories of coincidence and unseen powers fill a nagging
cultural need.

Clive Barker has written that there are two kinds of fantastic fiction:
"One ... offers up a reality that resembles our own, then postulates
a second invading reality, which has to be accomodated or exiled by the
status quo it is attempting to overtake ... The second kind of fantastique
is far more delirious. In these narratives, the whole world is haunted
and mysterious."

Describing a world that superficially resembles our own but is in fact
influenced secretly by the movements of inscrutable forces, Sandman
certainly qualifies as Barker's second breed of fantasy. But it's not alone
in this aspect. On one side, it is flanked by the growing success of television
shows such as The X-Files. On the other, it is flanked by the hit
role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, where vampires secretly
struggle for control over a mortal world that looks, at first glance, like
our own.

The renewed interest in these stories is an understandable reaction
to the chaotic meaninglessness implied by the modern condition. We are
bombarded with information but have few viable paradigms to process them.
We are becoming increasingly aware that the worst political problems require
solutions beyond the grasp of even the wisest leaders. And everywhere we
look, it becomes increasingly evident that everyone offering truth in any
form is also serving an agenda, which renders their truth suspect.

This kind of chaos heightens the need for myths, modern or otherwise.
As Ray Mescallado wrote in The Comics Journal in 1994: " ...
isn't mythology a way of arrogating control by humans, the claim of a greater
pattering instead of inchoate randomness, the illusion of human behavior
in the machinations of the unknowable?"

So at first, Sandman would seem to make sense of what may be
a fundamentally senseless existence, with gods defining and determining
the forces of nature and human existence.

Or does it? Gaiman's gods are not exactly gods in one crucial way: they
grow up. This isn't really surprising, given that Sandman is concerned
with gods more as personalities than as archetypes. Dream's relationships
with his siblings of the Endless -- Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Destruction
and Destiny -- resemble a dysfunctional family more than anything else.

But when we discover that Destruction has been a prodigal for over 300
years, leaving his role but not allowing anyone to fill it, it raises questions
about what the Endless truly are. After all, things have continued to burn
and collapse in his absence. So exactly what role do the Endless fulfill?

Or take the example of Lucifer, the former Lord of Hell. In Season
of Mists Lucifer tires of his position and abdicates, leaving Dream
the key to Hell. Gaiman takes a risk in deviating from myth so strongly:
If Lucifer chooses to abdicate, what are we to make of the meaning of Hell,
of damnation and of the devil as evil personified?

This kind of playing with myth is not unique. But if Gaiman's version
stands out, it's because he understands the source of a myth's strength.
It doesn't lie in legalistic interpretation, nor in revision of that interpretation.
It lies, instead, in the image itself, in the vision that lingers not as
a concept, but as a feeling.

In the wake of Lucifer's abdication, a throng of gods assemble in Dream's
palace, asking for the key to Hell. In a few short strokes, Gaiman fleshes
out his gods with a warmth and charm that a more theological treatment
would miss. The Egyptian goddess Bast is sultry, wise, and calculating.
The Norse god Loki is an emaciated, greedy trickster, as sly as he is immoral.

But to say that Gaiman simply understands myths would be an understatement
-- he obviously loves stories of all kinds. More than anything else, Sandman
is about the tale itself, about the power of imagining and the power of
telling.

In the World's End arc, travelers take refuge from a mysterious
storm at the World's End Inn to find themselves accompanied by others from
different times and different worlds. To pass the time, they spin yarns
of faerie adventures, encounters with sea serpents, and funereal apprenticeships
in the cities of the dead.

By themselves, most of the stories are remarkable, but Gaiman links
them together by focusing on the telling. In the World's End Inn, there
is a hearth, there is a table, and every traveler will leave enriched,
enlightened in some modest way by the tales of complete strangers.

It is the love of stories that drives Sandman's last issue, The
Tempest, which depicts Shakespeare's efforts to write his last play.
Dream provided Shakespeare with his talent, asking for two plays in return.
The first, A Midsummer Night's Dream was a gift for the faeries.
The second, The Tempest, in which the Duke Prospero manages to escape
his island exile through a mixture of fate and magic, is for Dream himself.

The creative, symbiotic relationship between Shakespeare and Dream is
ambiguous, and underlying it is the point that storytellers are magicians
as well, a thought echoed in Shakespeare's The Tempest: "These
our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air,
into thin air ..."

"The Tempest" is one last look at Morpheus as the Dream King,
driven by stories, composed of stories, bounded by stories. Near the end,
he tells Shakespeare, "I am Prince of Stories, Will, but I have no
story of my own. Nor shall I ever." Of course, he's wrong: He has
Gaiman as a reverent and perceptive scribe. Gaiman is reminding the reader,
on the eve of the Dream Lord's death, that a good tale never stops having
relevance, never stops being worth the telling. Princes may die, but they
will always live on in their stories.

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